How does a great institution die? In the same two stages as Hemingway believed people went bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly. Entire decades may pass in which a vital service or a venerable organisation undergoes deep cuts, blundering reforms, and erosion as slow and unremarkable as that of a coastline. Then one day – snap! It breaks, for ever.
This is what’s happening right now to one of our oldest and most essential services. An institution that binds the country together, and daily and almost invisibly helps to define it.
